From MMA Fighter to Entrepreneur: Caleb Vallotton on Mental Toughness

VO #1:

Some of the most epic things ever accomplished began with the phrase, hold my beer and watch this. Chill those ice cubes, pop that cork, or crack open that can because we're about to share an amazing story. Welcome to the Forward Drinking Podcast. Here's your host, John Hutchings.

John Hutchings:

Welcome back to the Forward Drinking Podcast. I am your host, John Hutchings. Today's guest is known best for his time spent in combat sports. Prior to traveling the world for mixed martial arts competitions, Caleb Vallotton was avidly working on a career in wrestling and utilized that talent to get a scholarship to a D1 NCAA college to compete. Like most great stories, Caleb had to endure challenges along the way, overcome them, and then utilize the fighting spirit to launch himself into entrepreneurship. Crack a cold one. The story is one you don't want to miss. Caleb, welcome to the show.

Caleb Vallotton:

Thanks, John.

John Hutchings:

Awesome. Well, buddy, it's been a while since we've last hung out since the beer days.

Caleb Vallotton:

Yeah, man. It's been, I think, about three years now. It's crazy to come back and see it.

John Hutchings:

Well, I'm stoked to have you on the show, and especially too because this marks something a little bit different than what we've been doing. Your story is a really good one in that it's entrepreneurship tied with beating the shit out of people. I really like that.

Caleb Vallotton:

Thanks, man. Yeah, it's been a fun trip so far.

John Hutchings:

Cool. What are we drinking today?

Caleb Vallotton:

We're drinking 2 Towns. This is their Prickly Pearadise. It's one of my favorites.

John Hutchings:

Well, I'm grabbing the good old, handy dandy bottle opener here, and we'll pour this in our very high end plastic glassware.

Caleb Vallotton:

Yummy.

John Hutchings:

There you go.

Caleb Vallotton:

Thank you, sir.

John Hutchings:

Feel free to top yourself off whenever you need to.

Caleb Vallotton:

Cool.

John Hutchings:

Sounds like something out of a beer commercial or something on TV. Alrighty, well, cheers brother.

Caleb Vallotton:

Cheers.

John Hutchings:

Welcome to the show.

Caleb Vallotton:

Thank you.

John Hutchings:

If I remember correctly, you grew up here. You're a Reddinite.

Caleb Vallotton:

I am. Born and raised.

John Hutchings:

I love it. I love it. Well, tell me about growing up in the big town of Redding.

Caleb Vallotton:

I grew up just outside of Redding in Bella Vista. My parents still live there today, built a house there when I was just about one years old. I've known nothing different besides going off for college, but it's been a great time. I love Shasta County. I love Redding. I love the area. I even like the heat a little bit. It's nice.

John Hutchings:

One of those guys that just loves to do hard things, sweating and dealing with the heat. Yeah, definitely a scorcher here. I know as we had mentioned when we talked before, you mentioned to me that there was a time in your childhood that... I know we've talked about you being a combat sports person, we're going to get into that, but there was a time in your childhood though that you felt a call to entrepreneurship.

Caleb Vallotton:

Yeah, I wouldn't say it was even necessarily much of a call, just a realization that I could do it. My grandpa had me working really young, working in his garden, growing vegetables and anything you could think of. It was more just that, oh, I can achieve this. He had me set up a corn stand when I was real young. It was just like, oh, I'm putting in this work and I'm reaping the rewards just like anything. Just gave me that possibility of, hey, I can achieve this and I can be a salesman if I want to, and I can achieve anything. I put my mind to it.

John Hutchings:

Yeah, that's awesome. We've had multiple people on the show that have talked about two things. One, whether it was a grandparent or a parent, but two, and I love this, this is just me personally, my wife really loves this, but the growing up with the learning the value of hard work through whether it was a farming kind of a background, some sort of a manual labor type of background, but something that also just push people to know, one, they could do it because they understood hard work, but two, they understood that there's more out there that they wanted to achieve more.

I think there's a common denominator that we're starting to see from the show, which is cool. I mean, it's obvious that you fall into that. You obviously learned the value of hard work, but the Caleb that I know, which is crazy, by the way, for those that are listening to this, because the Caleb that I know is the nicest, kindest person that I've ever known. I didn't know that you were a combat sports person and what a role that played in your life.

For those that don't know, we'll get into it later, but Caleb and I met through beer, which is what I do, obviously, the Fall River Brewing. How did you get into combat sports, because I know that's something you started at a very young age with wrestling, is that correct?

Caleb Vallotton:

Yeah. My dad one day just brought me to a wrestling practice and said, "Hey, we're going to try this out." He had kind of I don't want to say manipulated, but brainwashed me at a young age. He used to put me to bed with tapes of Dave Schultz wrestling films and just learned it through osmosis. We had a mat in the garage. I didn't even put it together until I started wrestling, but dad had been putting those little seeds in as I was getting older.

And then everything just clicked once I started and it was like, oh, this sport's made for me. It's made for a skinny wiry kid who has tons of energy. It just clicked and I knew that's what I wanted to do once I started it.

John Hutchings:

What would you attribute to... I mean, you started having success at a young age with wrestling. You and I had kind of spoken before and you'd mentioned some key things at a young age where you really... This is not like a kid wants to do something. They want to play Little League. They want to do it. I mean, you latched onto this as like, this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to be a professional athlete. What was it at a young age that really allowed you to latch onto that and really take it to the next level?

Caleb Vallotton:

I really wanted to do something professionally in sports. That was my goal as a kid. My dad was a big sports fan. I watched baseball, football, everything coming up. I tried also every single sport that you could imagine. I mean, from hockey to track to literally everything. I gave it a shot to see what I was really good at. It wasn't until wrestling I really found that love and that niche for myself and everything just started to click. And from there, dad sat me down and was like, "Hey, if we want to do this, let's do it right."

He gave me the roadmap of how we were going to do it with grades, with lifting, with extra runs, extra practices, extra camps. Gave me that roadmap, but he also gave me the roadmap of goal setting, and that was huge just because it gave me a vision. When I was a kid, I had taken third at one of the state tournaments and dad had put that picture on my wall. I looked at it every single day of that was the goal I wanted to get first, but I ended up coming short. I was always focused on those goals, always looking at that through that roadmap lens so that I had stairs to get to that first place.

And that's something that just was instilled in me at a young age, and it helped me give purpose to all the pain and suffering and hard work that I was doing. That way that there was a reward at the end. Even if I never saw it, that was why I was suffering. Pain gives vision a purpose, and that's what it was.

John Hutchings:

That message is huge, especially with today's youth. I can't emphasize that enough from my perspective obviously. I've never done anything like an extreme sports athlete or combat sports, which is a whole nother level of awesome mental toughness, which is why I really, really have a lot of respect for those who do it. I think they also make incredible entrepreneurs because they're so freaking mentally tough.

Looking at this from a young age again, I mean, you put a lot of work into this and there was I'm assuming a reward that came out of that pretty early on in your career while you were still in high school based upon the drive that your dad instilled in you and going after those goals. What was that reward initially?

Caleb Vallotton:

Initially it was just I started beating guys who had beat me. It was just little steps. I was just like having success in the local circuit, beating these kids that had beat my butt ever since I was a kid. All of a sudden, I'm getting stronger, bigger, faster, more technical, and I'm leaving everyone in the dust. Those were my first little nuggets.

And then from there, I placed at state in my junior year, started getting recruited, and that was even bigger for me. That was my main goal was get to college, get on a scholarship. Those fruits started coming as I found that success, as I was doing the right things, getting my grades up, doing all the necessary hoops to be in an NCAA program. I started to see those rewards come, and eventually that's what led to me getting a scholarship at Oregon State.

John Hutchings:

That's amazing. The little bit I know from a buddy of mine, I have a high school friend of mine that wrestling was his life too, and that was one of the things that he really worked hard on. I know that back then there were these powerhouse schools for wrestling. Oregon State was no slouch. Just overall in general, I mean, that's a fantastic university to get into and to be able to reap that reward from all that hard work, it pays off. You get that first nugget as a kid.

Caleb Vallotton:

For sure.

John Hutchings:

How was it to transitioning from being here in Redding to a full ride D1 scholarship Oregon State University?

Caleb Vallotton:

I didn't get a full ride. It was a partial, but nonetheless, that was definitely my goal and got a lot of the school paid for. That was huge for me, but it was different. I was probably not as structured as I should have been, just myself with my own routine. That's something I preach to my wrestlers and my kids that I coach today is just have a regimen, have a routine. I think that's so huge. Because when you don't, just that little bit of maybe it's staying up 10 minutes later or maybe it's eating something bad can throw off your whole week and throw off all your training.

Just those little bit of things can throw you off for your ultimate goals and successes. I wasn't making the proper choices, left to my own devices as a young kid in college making college decisions obviously. Just hanging out with the wrong people, making the wrong decisions, really turned everything upside down. All of a sudden, I lost vision for those goals that I once had. That really hurt me in the long run, ended up losing my scholarship because of just the choices I was making.

John Hutchings:

If I was to say that I didn't have fun when I went to college, I'd be a liar. I definitely don't think I would've gotten into brewing beer if it weren't partly due to the fun that I had in college. I definitely can say I wasn't doing things to the level of an NCAA athlete, and there's a lot of pressure that goes along with that. I mean, it's the first time being away from home. You had mentioned that you lost your scholarship and that had to be a pretty major gut kick. What did you do to recover from that? Obviously you're here for a reason, so give us the comeback story.

Caleb Vallotton:

After that, I was lost. Like I said, that was one of my goals, to get a scholarship, to go D1. Just losing that, put everything on its head. I called my dad right away because my dad's been that guide for me and that life coach, as well as my wrestling coach. I called him and just said, "Dad, what do we do from here?" It's like, okay, next step, what can we do? And that was big for me, was him being able to come alongside me and help me out. We just started reaching out to other colleges and went out to Clarion University and had a recruiting trip out there.

And then went out to Fullerton, had a recruiting trip out there.I ended up choosing Fullerton just because of the sunshine. I didn't realize how much that wore on me at Oregon State as well. I needed something closer, more like home. It was like, okay, that was the closest I was going to get. I went to Fullerton, and what ended up happening was I signed a year lease in my apartment. My wife and I had just gotten married, so we both moved down there, all excited, new start, and then Fullerton drops their wrestling program a week after I signed that lease.

We were just totally upside down. I was just devastated. One, I lost a scholarship. And then two, I lost wrestling within months. It was pretty tough time for me and the Mrs. at that point. We didn't have jobs. We were living in Fullerton on our own, wondering what we were going to do next.

John Hutchings:

I mean, holy crap. You're at a college with no wrestling program as a NCAA wrestler. I mean, what do you do to pick up and get past that?

Caleb Vallotton:

I felt like I was really turning the corner in my training. I made the decision once I lost my scholarship to really... Woke me up a little bit and was like, okay, I really want to do this. I really want to compete. I want to continue to do this. I don't have many options at this point. There was a junior college that I was actually going to to make up some credits. I could have wrestled for them, but that was really my only option living down south at that point. I called Mark Munoz, who I'd known through camps and stuff coming up. We had a good relationship at the time.

I hit him up and he said, "Yeah, come by the gym. Come train." It was like no questions asked, nothing, didn't ask me my motivations or anything. It was just like, "Yeah, come train." I come to his gym. It's called Reign Training Center. I walk in and the first day he's training with Tito Ortiz, and it was just like, oh, okay, well, these are where the UFC guys fight. This seems like a good fit. Ever since then I was hooked and started fighting right away, started training with Mark every second I could, and it just totally changed my life.

John Hutchings:

That part is the part that just shocks me. Again, for the folks that don't know Caleb the way I know Caleb, again, one of the most kindhearted. I think there's a Jiujitsu club around town that I see it's called Violent Gentlemen. I think it's a really good explanation.

Caleb Vallotton:

That's actually a hockey club down in Orange County that my dad and I, we just buy all their stuff. Because like you said, yes, it's the perfect example of what we want to be. It's a violent person, but we're really gentlemen. It's just a sport that we play that's so violent. It's still a game to us.

John Hutchings:

You've gone from wrestler now. We've seen this with a lot of professional fighters that start off with wrestlers and they look at what they could do with their career. I mean, walk us through now your career in mixed martial arts.

Caleb Vallotton:

After training with Mark or during training with Mark, I got to train with so many high level guys, like I said. Just some of the top of the top UFC fighters. I was able to spar with them every day. I was able to roll with them, grapple, wrestle, and really test myself and see where I could be. At that point it was like, oh, I can do this. This is something that Taylor made for my style, for how I grapple. This is made for me. I got confidence in training with those guys, and I wanted to go pro as soon as possible.

It's a little bit harder to do now that they have the commissions in. I had to take a couple amateur fights, and I won both of those. My first one, I choked the guy out. Second one was against a brown belt in Jujitsu. It was like we were the main event and it was a good fight, but I ended up beating the guy up pretty good on the ground. And then I took my pro debut. It was hard to find a pro fight just because I was a D1 wrestler. Guys didn't want to fight me. There wasn't that many promotions around at that time.

I took a pro debut on nine days notice against a state champion wrestler, who I had known coming up. He was from California. His name was Paul Ruiz. But I took it on a nine-day notice just because I wanted to get a fight. I was just begging someone to give me a pro fight. I took that fight. I ended up losing a close decision, but I felt like I had got the better of the fight, and that's just how it goes sometimes. But from there, I went on a three fight win streak and was doing pretty well.

Tried out for The Ultimate Fighter, didn't get on the show, but tried out. I did what I wanted to do as far as in the fighting world. I ended up fighting one more time over in Guam against a guy named Michinori Tanaka for the PXC, and that was the biggest promotion I got to. I had a great fight against him. I felt like the first round really went my way. And then later on in the fight, I just started to gas out and my legs just felt heavy. This was before I found out about some of my allergies and stuff.

I had eaten wheat bagels right before, no excuse, but I didn't know I was allergic to wheat. My body was all swollen up and the time difference had changed. Everything just kind of went wrong that could have and just gassed out and ended up getting submitted. But it was a great time being able to fight and fight alongside those guys, being able to travel. I got to go to Hawaii for fights, got to go to Guam, got to go multiple places, got to train with some of the best, got to have Big John McCarthy ref one of my fights.

It was just such a cool time. Being able to rub elbows with those guys and really try to make a career out of doing something I loved was really important to me.

John Hutchings:

I watched your fight in Guam on YouTube. Dude, it was crazy. I don't even know how I got onto this, but I stumbled across it and I'm like, I see this... Was he Chinese or Japanese?

Caleb Vallotton:

I think he was maybe Japanese.

John Hutchings:

I'm like, that's a big dude, a big yolked dude. I'm like, holy crap, I think that's Caleb. I'm like, that is Caleb. I don't even know if it was a weight cut thing, the guy looked like he outweighed you by 50 pounds.

Caleb Vallotton:

Yeah. He ended up getting popped for steroids not soon after that.

John Hutchings:

Dude was like a brahma bull.

Caleb Vallotton:

He was a big boy. He actually made it to the UFC. He was a stud, but yeah, he was not a string being like me.

John Hutchings:

Well, you know what was crazy in that fight, in the beginning of the fight, I literally started getting nervous for you, even though I'm like, this was old. It happened a long time ago. I'm watching, I'm like, oh my God, I hope I don't watch Caleb just get thrashed here. This is going to bother me to watch. I remember in the beginning of the fight, I'm like, holy crap, Caleb's like got this dude's back.

He's about to put him in a Kimura. I remember you had the guy, and then you'd rolled it to a go-go plot or something. I remember they were like, whoa, look at the Jujitsu on Caleb. And then you could just tell the guy was so big and powerful that he would just charge his way out of it. But was that the toughest fight you ever had, or did you have some other ones that were worse?

Caleb Vallotton:

Both that and my pro debut. The pro debut had a little bit more just because it was the unknown, just taking that on such short notice. That was kind of the butterflies up until, but that one, yeah, definitely during the fight was one of those things where it was just like, this guy's not going away. I hit him with my best shot. I had my best Jujitsu moves on him, and he just wasn't going away.

He wasn't getting tired. It was one of those things where I'm turning purple from all the ground and pounding and rolling around and he's still breathing fresh. That was one of those ones where you're just like, wait, what's going on? It didn't end up going my way. But yeah, it was definitely one of the toughest situations I've ever been in.

John Hutchings:

Walk us through then how you go from smashing faces to getting into entrepreneurship.

Caleb Vallotton:

I couldn't find fights. That was my big thing was I was always ready for fights. I would take them on weeks notice, two weeks, whatever. It happened. I just wanted to fight as many fights as I could to try to get to that next level. I knew it was going to be a short-lived career. I had concussions coming up through wrestling and football, so I was like, I can't be getting hit in the head until I'm 40. That's just not realistic. I knew it was going to be like a sprint, not a marathon for me. I just wanted to get as many as I could and see how far I could get.

Tons of them fell through. I mean, I just had, you name it, happen. Guys would just fall through last minutes. I had guys not show up for weigh-ins. I had guys pull out the week before. I had an injury a week before one of my fights. I cut myself right over the eyelids so I couldn't fight. And then I had mixed up blood work for one of my last fights. The blood work got mixed up, and so it wasn't the proper blood work and they need 48 hours to get it processed and stuff. I was just out of luck.

At that time, my wife was pregnant with our first child, and it was the writing on the wall for me. It was just like, okay, it's time to go get a real job. That's how I ended up getting started with running distributing and getting into that. Again, it was one of those things where we're just like, oh, I can sell beer. I've sold things before. I know how to do this.

From there, it was working for the Jensen's for about eight years, working for them, learning the ropes of business, learning the correct things to do, say, how to communicate was a big thing for me, big learning curve for me how to communicate properly to business people and different people that you're selling to because it's all a little game on who and how you're talking. Learning the ropes from them, and then realizing I had some ability and I could do sales on my own.

I can do management on my own. I got the way things worked, got to see how the bread was made, if you will. It was like, oh, I can do this. And then it was just searching for what I wanted to do. We're drinking 2 Towns today because I got to see them when we picked them up as the distributor. We got to see them create in their own environment. Sort of like how you are, you get to see... We've had brew days together where it's like you get to see the real passion comes out for what you guys are doing and why you're doing it.

To be able to sit and talk with those guys at 2 Towns was just like you saw their pride and their joy and how they were making everything from picking the apples to brewing the cider, to drinking it and sharing it. It was like, oh, okay, that's what I really want. Yes, I can do business. I can sell X product, but I really wanted something that was going to fit with me that I could take pride in. From that point on, I was looking and searching for what is this going to be for me in the long run? Just like you have your beer, they have their cider.

What is that product going to look like at the end? I was thinking of selling houses, real estate, thinking of selling other products, and it was just like nothing was clicking for me. It came down to what do I love and how do I make money doing it, right? It was like, okay, I love wrestling. I love combat sports. I love Jujitsu. How do I make money doing it? How do I do that in Redding? Because again, I love Redding. I love living here. I don't want to live anywhere else. I've lived in Oregon, in Southern California.

I've seen how the other side lives. I don't like the city life. It's not for me. I like where we live. I love just being able to go out in the mountains, go take a hike, river, lake, whatever it is. I love the outdoors. It was like I couldn't live in a city again. That wasn't going to happen. I started building what I thought was going to be a school. I was going to create a school that we could do some independent study style things and create this wrestling school. I had a partner with that and we were developing it, and it just didn't work for how we wanted to work it.

We didn't have the know-how for the Scholastics. We just didn't have the time and effort to get that built. That went by the wayside. I ended up getting linked up with the Rice Brothers during COVID. I was still working, but we were mobile working at that time. Tanner was one of the only businesses that stayed open during the first lockdown. He was just like, "No, we're not playing that game. We're a Jujitsu gym. That's what we do. If we get sick, we get sick." Just that alone was just like, okay, that's kind of my vibe.

That fits with what I'm about because it's just stay out of our business. Let us work. I was a big fan of Tanner's from that point on, and we linked up. He really focused on the Gi Jujitsu and the kimono that's more traditional. My game was always the MMA No-Gi wrestling kind of game. I fit really nicely as a counterpart for him because I was able to bring an aspect of his gym that he didn't have before. They did a little bit of No-Gi, but really it was only once a week. Didn't have a consistent class.

That was, again, my passion. About a year in, I started a little wrestling club, and then eventually started the No-Gi Jujitsu class, which I teach every day now at the gym. I'm teaching that. And then I'm teaching an MMA class. We'll move into a new gym soon and we'll be able to teach more classes. We'll have night classes for kickboxing, MMA, No-Gi. You name it, we'll have it. Wrestling. We're really excited about this new spot that's right downtown, the old Outwest Furniture building.

That will allow us to open up more, and eventually we'll be running tournaments out of there as well. That's been the basis of the business that I've been planning. I also have a little bit of product right now. We're launching slowly a brand for Run To Danger is my company, what I'm calling it. It's a Run To Danger Podcast, YouTube page, Instagram. And then we'll have products. We'll have combat products. Eventually want to create a shoe. I'm developing that right now for wrestling and Jujitsu MMA.

But for right now, it's just some wearables, some rash guards, some shorts, and we'll have some wrestling singlets to come along with that as well.

John Hutchings:

Amazing. Amazing. Well, I tell you what, we're going to take a little short commercial break here. You can hear from our sponsors. Caleb's going to give me a Jujitsu lesson while we're on break, but stick with us. We'll be right back.

VO #2:

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John Hutchings:

All right, welcome back to the show. Before we broke there, we were talking about your Run To Danger brand, and you mentioned something that was super cool that for me, as somebody who makes beer, we're the actual manufacturer of what we make. For those listening, like manufacturing businesses, put this in your little tough businesses. You mentioned about creating your own products though that are going to be shoes, which is super cool, a grappling shoe.

I mean, that's like in itself, that's a lot to undertake, let alone t-shirts and shorts and stuff like that. It's also awesome. But can you walk us through how you went from creating this brand? Obviously you are a wealth of knowledge when it comes to the wrestling, combat sports and anything, but to actually have the understanding of how to go create a product, whether it's a shoe, a t-shirt. How'd you do that?

Caleb Vallotton:

Luckily, Matthew Rice, who's a part owner in the gym, helped me out a lot when I was first getting going. He let me use his supplier and help me learn the ropes of how to even do it, what it looked like to sketch it out and some apps that I could use. He helped me with the basics of that, where to supply it from. And then from there, it was just trying to get my creativity and try to get what the brand meant on that paper. That was the hardest thing for me, was just trying to portray Run To Danger, because you could put something dangerous or whatever, but you don't want to be too corny.

Really, for me, it was about just that, simplicity of a brand where the name says it all. You don't really need to go too crazy with it, and you can keep it fairly basic. That was my feeling on the brand. I wanted to keep everything really clean. That's a lot of my style is just a real clean look, a real block letter. It is what it is. From there, it was developing the feel, because grappling and wrestling all has to do with a lot of feel. We're always moving and slipping. We want to feel comfortable when you're doing it.

Because if you've ever been in a singlet or even just a sweatshirt or something that has a tag that's always itching you or the wrong cotton on your skin, it can irritate you a lot, especially when we're trying to grind literally next to someone or on top of someone. If you have a weird friction on your body, all of a sudden you're like, oh, this feels disgusting and I don't want to wear this ever again. I have had rash guards and stuff where I've done that where it's just like, okay, this one's out.

I'm not wearing that one again. It doesn't feel good. That was a main start for me, because I started with just some rash guard materials and some shorts. That was my first products. For that it was like, okay, what is the material that feels best for me? Developing the right mixture of spandex and elastane or whatever product you're using, and finding that balance of where it's not too heavy, not too light, breeze a little bit, but doesn't wear out easily.

Finding those little niche things to make sure that everything of the product was perfect, but the branding was in line with what I wanted to as well. The shoes have been the most difficult part, and they'll probably be much later from the production. But for the shoes, it's been, okay, how can we be a little more unique? I wanted to do something a little more flexible with the shoes because a lot of shoes are just made the same. We don't really have even a model for wrestling shoes or grappling shoes, let alone wrestling shoes.

It's just, oh, we have this thin rubber sole and a cotton overland of the shoe. It's like, okay, but what about the functionality? Could we get better functionality from these shoes? Can I get grippier? Can I get less grippier? Can I get smoother? Can I get something that's going to be harder to hold onto? I always say this with my MMA fighters and No-Gi guys, it's a completely different game, wrestling versus Jujitsu and MMA just based on the shoes. It's like wearing a Gi versus No-Gi.

When you have shoes to slip out of, all of a sudden you don't need to stand as low to the ground. You don't need to be in a wrestling stance anymore because single legs are a lot harder to get. You grab onto a single leg, you can just slip your foot out. Bringing that back to the shoe, how do we make a shoe that's harder to grip? Because if we can be a little bit less of a stance in wrestling, all of a sudden our energy's better. We can lose a little bit on our stance, but we'll be able to slip out of every shot available.

It's just playing those games with it, trying to figure out exactly what I want. I'll have different versions I'm sure, but I do want to be different and set apart as well, so that way I can be a little more unique in such a saturated market.

John Hutchings:

It's wild to think that that type of thought process and the engineering process of what you're describing, most people will be talking about, well, the flex and the look and the grip. You're actually talking about designing a shoe that's meant to slip out of a single or double leg take down or any type of a Jujitsu move. It's incredible. With these designs, you guys have been able to go out. Do you find a manufacturing company that takes those and then can actually bring them to life? How does that even work?

Caleb Vallotton:

I'm working with a manufacturer right now, and I've made four samples of the shoes so far. They haven't turned out like I wanted, that's why I'd say it's probably going to be a little bit before we actually have a product that's marketable. It's a lot of trial and error for right now. Finding the right quality material has been another issue, where it's like I had one version of the shoe that just came apart. It was just like, okay, that's not going to work.

Quality product, but quality feeling product as well is the biggest rub for me right now. And then design and branding comes along after that. But for right now it's like, okay, what is the material I can make that this is going to feel perfect, but last for at least a good long year of hard wrestling or grappling? That's been the toughest part for me right now.

John Hutchings:

Oh man, I can't even imagine. I don't even know how to embark on that. You mentioned branding, and I want to get back to your brand, Run To Danger. Walk us through it. Obviously you had mentioned before, this is something that your dad and you used to say, I don't know, when you were young or whatnot, but I mean, walk us through the brand because the brand itself is super cool. I love it.

Caleb Vallotton:

Going back to my podcast, on episode nine of Run To Danger Podcast, I interviewed my dad and we tell the whole backstory of how Run To Danger got started. That's a great one. But in short, Dad was taking over the wrestling team from football and wanted to give us a name, something that we could hold onto that we could look back on and really hold dear to ourselves that would help us in competition, help us motivate ourselves, help us work harder and bust our butts more than anyone ever could by just yelling at us something that was going to make us work.

As he was interviewing different coaches, he interviewed the Shank Brothers, and they had been very successful in wrestling. I think one of them won state, and both of them went Division 1 wrestling scholarships. He asked them, he was like, "What do you do? How do you get kids better? How do you get Little Redding kids placing at state, going to Division 1 colleges, making a mark for yourselves?" He said, "Well, you got to get out. You got to go run to danger and find the best competition."

Dad was like, that's it, I'm stealing it. He heard the words run to danger, and really that's what his coaching motto had been from then on. It was we were going to find the toughest tournaments. We would go to Ohio, Virginia Beach. We went to Florida. We went everywhere and anywhere we could go to find the best, hardest, toughest competitions. And from that point on, we could always look back whatever tournament it was. Dad would always say, have you been to tougher places?

Have you wrestled tougher people? Have you wrestled in bigger venues? And about 99% of the time we could say yes because we really had gone everywhere, done everything. It really made the section tournament, even the state tournament look a lot smaller from what it would've been if we just had stepped in there for the first time or stepped into a big 10 mat arena for the first time. That culture shock really can wear on a kid as he's got so much going through his mind, getting ready for a match, getting ready for a tournament, getting his weight down, scouting his opponent.

There's so many things that go into it that if you can just remember, oh, I've done this before. I've ran to danger. I've found the toughest. Going back to my MMA story, I've trained with the top of the top. My partners were the best of the best. I have no issues with confidence when I step out on the mat because I've already done the work. I've already been against the toughest guys. There's not much this guy can do to me.

John Hutchings:

Sure. Sure. Absolutely, man. I want to segue here into your dad. I've never had the pleasure of meeting your dad, but I've seen a lot of pictures, I've watched a lot of videos, but the one thing I think is cool, how old is your dad now?

Caleb Vallotton:

Dad's 62, I believe.

John Hutchings:

He just got his brown belt within the last six months or so in Jujitsu?

Caleb Vallotton:

A year ago.

John Hutchings:

A year ago. How long has he been training for Jujitsu?

Caleb Vallotton:

Probably 14, 15 years.

John Hutchings:

I mean, that's incredible. The thing with that that I think is super cool that I wanted to touch on, and it is especially as you and I get older and we have kids, I mean, awesome parents raise awesome kids, right?

Caleb Vallotton:

Yes.

John Hutchings:

Through this whole thing, it's awesome too that you're taking something that you and your dad have had since you were a kid with that motto and putting it to real life through entrepreneurship and stuff. It's super cool. I wanted to bring that up that I thought that was pretty rad when I saw your dad. At first, I thought he was getting his black belt. I'm like, holy crap. Even though brown belt is still amazing. Damn, Jerry's a badass.

Caleb Vallotton:

Yeah, he's not far off.

John Hutchings:

Well, we're going to go ahead and shift gears here a little bit, because there's a couple of topics that you and I have touched on that are really important to me with this podcast and things that I find really awesome about you and things that I think are really helpful for others, whether they want to apply it, because this doesn't apply to just fighting. It doesn't apply to even entrepreneurship only. I mean, it applies to life in general, but two things that I think you're just amazing at that I want to have you coach your audience.

Number one is goal setting. You talked about goal setting even from when you were a young kid, and you stuck to those things, which is very odd for people at a young age to be able to do it, five, six, eight years old, and hold those goals up through high school to do that. But now you're also teaching young kids how to goal set at a young age, and they're seeing success, which is awesome to watch. I mean, I watch the stuff that you guys do with the...

I've never met Tanner, I've never met his brother, but the stuff that's going on at that school is rad. I'm seeing all these little kids just kicking ass all over the world, and it's because they have world-class coaches that are doing great things to teach our youth great things, and one of them is goal setting. Walk us through your strategy on goal setting and what has worked for you and what you're teaching your kids in your school on how to set goals and how to be successful and stick with them.

Caleb Vallotton:

Like you said, dad was in on it at a young age for me. It was always about goal setting, always giving vision to the pain, always figuring out why you were doing what you were doing. If you just have even just a practice where you're just going in, you have no vision of what the practices are going to look like, what you want to get out of the practice, what you want to work on during the practice, it can be very mundane. It can be very dull and boring right away. You can lose interest with your wrestlers.

You can lose interest with yourself just by walking into that practice room and not having a vision of what you're going to do. You compile that and you put that in terms of a season or a career, and it's so easy to get distracted and get totally burned out when you're not constantly bringing up those goals, not constantly looking, reassessing, and putting further, tougher, harder goals out there each time, because you can reach a goal. That was one of the big things for me was I reached my goal of getting a Division 1 scholarship, and that was where I let the gas pedal off.

You can reach those goals, and as soon as you reach those goals, all of a sudden, if you're not reevaluating it and reassessing your goals at every turn, all of a sudden, you've reached those goals and you have no more vision. It's so easy to get distracted and you no longer have purpose. You no longer have that same gumption that you brought to that initial training, that initial goal because you've reached one of them and all of a sudden those fall off. With one of my wrestlers or my top wrestlers, I really emphasize goals.

One of them I bring up just because I worked with him closely. I had him at the end of the year or midyear actually, I had him write down each of his goals. By the end of the year, we had already crossed off half of them just because we wrote them down. We gave that vision a purpose, and all of a sudden, we just started knocking them out. I think that's so important, one, because like I said, it can get so mundane and so boring. You need those little wins as you go.

And then two, you need to make sure that you're stretching and looking, okay, I can accomplish this. What else can I accomplish? How big can we make this thing? Because it's uncanny how much kids can accomplish when you just give them that roadmap.

John Hutchings:

Absolutely. It's something I see so much, it's like the lowering of the bar these days has become something... It seems so rampant, especially with youth. Let's lower the bar. Let's lower the bar. Whereas the other way around, I'm like, no, man. Teach people to set that goal. But when you hit it, continually raise the bar. We say it here in our business all the time, there's never going to come a point in time that we think we're too good or that we've learned everything. I mean, there's always more to learn.

We can always get better. We can always get sharper. We can always make a better product that's going to last longer. You name it. We can always work harder. But I look at what you guys are pumping out now for students as you guys transition into teachers in your entrepreneurial journey, and it's just amazing what you guys are doing. Hats off to you for that.

This actually brings me to my second question, and this is one that's really near and dear to me, especially too now that I have young children, and I've been looking at my daughter and my son trying to look at, this is something I want them to go into what you guys are doing with your Jujitsu school and stuff because of the mental toughness that it's teaching. It's something I feel is of a rampant thing with our society and just in general is that everybody seems to really be lacking the mental toughness that it takes to be not only successful in entrepreneurship, just successful and able to get through life.

You guys are doing amazing things with yourselves. Obviously you're doing it with these kids. How are you guys able to teach mental toughness to a five-year-old? It's incredible. These kids are killers, dude.

Caleb Vallotton:

For sure. Yeah, no. It's one of the toughest things to teach, to be honest, because you have to grind them. You can't just teach mental toughness. You can't just talk about it. You literally have to physically do it. They have to physically overcome that pain. They have to physically overcome whatever it is to achieve, and then they have to do it consistently. The biggest thing for mental toughness I think, is just showing up.

That mental toughness for some of these kids to make that choice every single day to go in, put a Gi on, 100 degree weather, and go get choked out for an hour, that's not an easy choice. That's really not. But when they make that choice consistently and they start to learn and they start to love it, all of a sudden, those easy goals just come easier and easier and easier. All of a sudden, that consistency builds because they're starting to reach that achievement.

You've held a line from the beginning where we hold a very high line of not achievement, but we hold a line of greatness of this is where we want to get. Like you said, you can never be perfect, but you're always going to be reaching for perfection. You're always going to be striving for that. You realize that that's not attainable, but you work as though it is. When you can work as though as perfection is achievable, there's nothing that can stop you.

Literally you can go through anything if you have that work ethic to get you through those hard times, those weight cuts, those long hours, those long tournaments where you have five matches in a day, where you're cutting that last six ounces after you missed a couple of meals, or it's a hard grind practice and you got one more match left. You don't get that unless you've done it already so many little times. That's where you get that confidence to have mental toughness.

If you don't have those little wins, you'll never have the big wins. You'll never walk around with your chest out with that confidence because you've never achieved. If you don't achieve, it's all just false bravado.

John Hutchings:

Right, totally. I agree 100%. I definitely could take a page out of the book of the mental toughness thing as well. I don't think if anybody has never competed in what you guys do, and I never have, so I just don't think anybody will ever be able to fully acknowledge and know what that's like. For those people that are listening, I mean, I encourage, and as I've gotten older, I've thought about for my exercise and stuff that that'd be something I should be getting into.

But I think overall, just the continued grind of that mental toughness, even as we get older, but especially for my kids, man. I want them to feel that and know what that is. We're going to go ahead and wrap this one up. But for everybody that's listening, Caleb, do you have a website for Run To Danger? Is all this stuff set up for...

Caleb Vallotton:

Yeah. It's runtodanger.co right now. We're trying to get com, but right now it's dot co.

John Hutchings:

Perfect. People, they can jump on there and grab some products, some Run To Danger t-shirts and stuff, hats.

Caleb Vallotton:

Yep. Yep. Right now we just have the shorts, rash guard set, and we'll be coming out with a lot more this fall.

John Hutchings:

Awesome. Awesome. I have been watching the YouTube channel with your podcast. For those guys that are tuning in, check out the Run To Danger Podcast. Watch the YouTube channels. There's some really, really awesome videos on there of some people that you've interviewed. It's super cool. Thank you for listening today. Caleb, thank you for being here.

Caleb Vallotton:

Thank you.

John Hutchings:

Someone I very much admire. I'm so, so excited for your entrepreneurial journey and the success that you're going to see. Obviously anybody that can spend a lifetime beating the shit out of people and sometimes maybe taking a beating, I have no doubt in my mind you're going to be successful beyond all your wildest beliefs. To everybody else listening, thank you for joining us today for the show.

If you haven't already, please like and subscribe to the Forward Drinking Podcast. I'm about to give you another plug out, Run To Danger Podcast. Forward Drinking Podcast. We'll be around here real soon for another show. Cheers.

VO #1:

Thanks for listening to the Forward Drinking Podcast, hosted by John Hutchings. Has this episode motivated you to create your own amazing story? Then please subscribe and leave a rating and review on your favorite podcast app. You can also follow the Forward Drinking Podcast on Facebook, Instagram, or TikTok at @ForwardDrinkingPodcast. Thanks again for listening. Until next time.